Google has announced that its search algorithm will start keeping track of the number of valid copyright removal notices a site receives. According to Google, “this ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.”
The goal is to respond to publishers, media sites and copyright holders who claim that Google doesn’t do enough to remove links to their copyrighted material. This change will effectively push links to stolen content by pushing them down on search results. Google says, it’s been getting “much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online.” Google has received copyright removal notices for more than 4.3 million URLs over the past few months. That’s more than in all of 2009.
In its announcement, Google notes that users can always file a “counter notice” when a site owner believes that their content was wrongly removed. Google stresses that it won’t remove any pages from its search results unless it receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner. Still, there's a chance that this update will push legitimate links to the bottom of Google’s search results pages.
